Consortium

Escape the hustle and bustle of the holiday season with a quiet stroll through Norfolk Botanical Garden. Admission to the gardens is free 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during this month. Featured flowers in the garden are the camellias, representing more than 450 varieties. The gardens' Hofheimer Camellia Garden was created in 1992 in memory of Alan J. and Aline F. Hofheimer, founding members of the Virginia Camellia Society. In 1997, the Garden's camellia collection was named an Official North American Collection by the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta's North American Plant Collection Consortium.

By Prue Salasky, psalasky@dailypress.com and By Prue Salasky, psalasky@dailypress.com | August 3, 2014

HAMPTON - There are a dozen stories in the room. Participants - black and white, young and old, men and women - each have their own narrative as to how they came to be in a workshop to learn how to control diabetes. They're insulin-dependent, mostly overweight, frustrated and ready to learn. "If I knew then what I've learned in this course, I wouldn't be here," said Melody Carver, 62, of Hampton, who was diagnosed as borderline diabetic more than five years ago. She went on to suffer liver and kidney problems, her sugar level reaching as high as 454 - blood glucose is measured in milligrams per decliter and any reading over 180 is cause for alarm.

A small high-tech business needs an engineer to help cover a three-month surge in business. Meanwhile, a NASA employee who recently took a buyout is looking to keep a hand in aerospace, without returning to it full time. The business and the worker could find each other through a labor pool consortium that a group of the city's high-tech firms are talking about creating. The companies discussed it Tuesday at the second of a series of business round tables organized by the city Department of Development.

NEWPORT NEWS - The normally low-key meetings of a group of area social workers had by most measures turned unusually contentious on Tuesday. "Emotion" and "passion" were words Dee Schwartz used repeatedly. Schwartz, a staffer at the nonprofit Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board, was presiding over the monthly meeting of the Greater Virginia Peninsula Homelessness Consortium, and she was urging speakers at the meeting to address each other civilly. But her decision about how to handle two key votes at the end of the meeting only fanned the flames further.

NEWPORT NEWS - The normally low-key meetings of a group of area social workers had by most measures turned unusually contentious on Tuesday. "Emotion" and "passion" were words Dee Schwartz used repeatedly. Schwartz, a staffer at the nonprofit Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board, was presiding over the monthly meeting of the Greater Virginia Peninsula Homelessness Consortium, and she was urging speakers at the meeting to address each other civilly. But her decision about how to handle two key votes at the end of the meeting only fanned the flames further.

An official with sway over how federal dollars to help with homelessness are doled out on the Peninsula appears unwilling to reverse a decision to deny funding to the region's largest winter-time homeless shelter. LINK of Hampton Roads, which operates that emergency shelter, learned in late March that it has been deemed ineligible to receive $65,000 next year from a grant to cover certain aspects of its operations. The reason: its leaders missed three of the Greater Virginia Peninsula Homelessness Consortium's monthly meetings.

Virginia has a chance for a big boost in its bid to be part of an exciting future in transportation. The state Transportation Department and Virginia Tech have joined with other businesses and research institutions in a consortium headed by General Motors to seek $145 million the federal government is making available to develop so-called "smart" highways and cars. One other consortium is competing for the money. The Virginia interests would apply their as yet undetermined share of the grant to develop the first two miles of what will ultimately be a six-mile test smart highway the state has been planning between Blacksburg and Interstate 81. The smart highway technology, which will complement specially equipped vehicles, will help a traveler to avoid congested roads and accident scenes, choose routes and travel on toll roads without carrying coins.

Seven localities formed a consortium to coordinate schooling for people without diplomas. More people are passing a significant educational hurdle since seven Middle Peninsula localities banded about two years ago to coordinate schooling for people without high school diplomas. Virginia's "Race to GED" is a winner, school officials said. They are participating in the push started in 2003 by then-Gov. Mark R. Warner to encourage people to seek General Educational Development certificates.

Students throughout Hampton Roads should soon enjoy more high-tech classroom lessons, thanks to a new $638,000 grant from the Virginia Department of Education. Expected to generate a total of $3.1 million over five years, the grant was awarded to the Consortium for Interactive Instruction, a program operated by Norfolk-based WHRO-TV to promote the use of technology as a classroom tool. The consortium is using the money, part of President Bush's sweeping No Child Left Behind Act, to expand free training sessions for teachers seeking to integrate spreadsheets, online videos and Internet portals more seamlessly into lesson plans.

NEWPORT NEWS - The Peninsula's largest emergency homeless shelter may have to close down after a funding request was rejected. The request from LINK of Hampton Roads, which put up 552 homeless people this past winter, fell short not because of a cutback from the funding source, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Instead, LINK administrators, the shelter managers, missed one too many meetings of a regional group that now determines which local homeless providers are eligible to compete for grant dollars.

An official with sway over how federal dollars to help with homelessness are doled out on the Peninsula appears unwilling to reverse a decision to deny funding to the region's largest winter-time homeless shelter. LINK of Hampton Roads, which operates that emergency shelter, learned in late March that it has been deemed ineligible to receive $65,000 next year from a grant to cover certain aspects of its operations. The reason: its leaders missed three of the Greater Virginia Peninsula Homelessness Consortium's monthly meetings.

NEWPORT NEWS - The Peninsula's largest emergency homeless shelter may have to close down after a funding request was rejected. The request from LINK of Hampton Roads, which put up 552 homeless people this past winter, fell short not because of a cutback from the funding source, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Instead, LINK administrators, the shelter managers, missed one too many meetings of a regional group that now determines which local homeless providers are eligible to compete for grant dollars.

HAMPTON - John Dever, president of Thomas Nelson Community College, was recently elected chairman of the Board of Directors of the Virginia Tidewater Consortium for Higher Education. Dever, 68, of Newport News, was selected because of his strong interest in encouraging cooperation among colleges and universities in Hampton Roads, according to Lawrence G. Dotolo, the consortium's president. Dotolo said he's confident Dever will serve well in the position, noting his experience in higher education.

RICHMOND - A pellet company is coming to the mostly empty Portsmouth Marine Terminal, after Virginia Port Authority board members approved a lease at a special meeting Wednesday. The board discussed the lease with ecoFUELS Pellet Storage in closed session, and approved it in a short public part of the meeting, without discussing the details. ecoFUELS Pellet Storage is a partnership of Houston energy company multiFUELS, and Northern Virginia-based CMI. The lease is for 13.1 acres of PMT property where the companies would store pelletized lumber for export.

The federal government has awarded a $5 million grant for the training of health-care workers to a public-private consortium on the Peninsula. The Peninsula Council for Workforce Development learned of the award on Tuesday. President Matthew James credited Shawn Avery, a vice-president for the council, with spearheading the grant application. It's estimated that the grant will allow for training more than 330 unemployed and dislocated workers for jobs paying an average salary of $43,000.

— For the past six years, College of William and Mary Professor George Greenia has taken dozens of the university's students on a weeks-long journey along the medieval pilgrimage trail, Camino de Santiago, in Spain. The annual 500-mile trek has not only been a journey of self-discovery for Greenia and the student participants, but also has resulted in research projects involving economics, linguistics and physiology. Greenia, inspired by his trips, is now leading an effort to create an international, interdisciplinary consortium between colleges and universities in the United States and Canada to teach pilgrimage studies in Santiago de Compostela, Spain starting in the summer of 2012.

RICHMOND - A pellet company is coming to the mostly empty Portsmouth Marine Terminal, after Virginia Port Authority board members approved a lease at a special meeting Wednesday. The board discussed the lease with ecoFUELS Pellet Storage in closed session, and approved it in a short public part of the meeting, without discussing the details. ecoFUELS Pellet Storage is a partnership of Houston energy company multiFUELS, and Northern Virginia-based CMI. The lease is for 13.1 acres of PMT property where the companies would store pelletized lumber for export.

A consortium of three Hampton youth groups is to receive a $200,000 grant from the National Service-Learning Partnership, an initiative designed to encourage young people to create innovative solutions to important community problems. The Hampton consortium is one of eight programs chosen out of 210 applicants from around the county to share in a 75th anniversary grant of $5 million from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Youth Innovation Fund. To qualify for the award, each applicant was required to have a new or existing youth-led board working with a local consortium of three or four youth-serving organizations, covering a city, county, municipality or school district.

The College of William and Mary will no longer offer new doctorate degrees in clinical psychology after 2011, ending a 30-year partnership with Eastern Virginia Medical School, Old Dominion and Norfolk State universities. William and Mary is withdrawing from the Virginia Consortium, a partnership between the four institutions to jointly offer a doctorate degree in clinical psychology, after the consortium decided to replace that program with a doctor of philosophy in psychology, said Laurie Sanderson, William and Mary's dean of Graduate Studies and Research in Arts and Sciences.

Seven localities formed a consortium to coordinate schooling for people without diplomas. More people are passing a significant educational hurdle since seven Middle Peninsula localities banded about two years ago to coordinate schooling for people without high school diplomas. Virginia's "Race to GED" is a winner, school officials said. They are participating in the push started in 2003 by then-Gov. Mark R. Warner to encourage people to seek General Educational Development certificates.